A little bird in the Clinton campaign tells me that it feels like a whole new campaign without Patti Solis Doyle at the helm; that you used to hear 'no' in every direction and now it's all 'get it done'. The term breath of fresh air, or some equivalent, came up. A family friend who'd been in charge of youth outreach has also been shifted out, and I'm told that they've gotten more done on that front in the past three weeks than for several months now. Also, that Mark Penn is widely referred to by staff as Mark Shrum, which I pass on because I think it's funny.

Will it be change enough in time? Surely, it's too late to fire the odious Penn in time for Texas and Ohio, but if there's anything left of the campaign to salvage after Tuesday, Clinton might consider that the loyalty for which she's so well known would be better placed in another.

Anyway ...

• Take action now to save the "naturally raised" label for meat. Right now, it means meat from an animal that got to roam around outside and eat grass during its life, like it evolved to do. If the Bush USDA gets their way, it might apply to cloned animals who never get to go outside.

• Last week, the Senate gave David Vitter permission to restrict Native women's access to reproductive health care, bringing us our latest installment in the ongoing saga of skeezy, skanky, old white guys pushing forced pregnancies on poor women they don't know. One presumes that if a prostitute of Vitter's had gotten knocked up, he'd have wanted her to do the moral thing, and carry to term.

• You may have heard about crazy plans to put iron filings in the ocean, or sulfur in the sky, to stop global warming. Would that really work? Who knows. Beyond the hype, step back here for a brief overview of geoengineering.

• Joel Stein knows how to hate women at least as well as Maureen Dowd, which is really quite an accomplishment. Truly, only these people are fit to guide a polity where ravenous wolverines for everyone sometimes sounds like a good choice.

• If we should manage to get a Democrat ensconced in the executive branch this time around, I don't want Sens. Hagel and Lugar anywhere near the proceedings.

• The next indignity for American job seekers - the pre-employment credit check.

• It's a changed world when Scrabulous rates an NYT story.

• Obama says homophobia isn't very Christian.

• The House stepped up, it's time for the Senate to take away subsidies to fabulously profitable energy companies.

• Some occupational health news and then a bit of single-payer health care blogging.

• Republicans get Hucked!

• Republicans get dodgy.

• Republicans get explained ... Their only purpose, "to liquidate the government of the Unite[d] States, sell off its assets to their cronies at pennies-on-the-dollar, and turn the full, voracious fury of an Imperial Presidency and unregulated corporate America loose on the world."

• The House gets ready to cave on telecom immunity. Why does Silvestre Reyes hate the Constitution?

• The school lunch program has been at risk since 2003, but it took an amateur video that went viral for something to be done about it. Remember, this is how much the USDA and their friends in corporate agribusiness care about your kids: "The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, or AMS, which buys commodities for the school-lunch program and for government feeding for infants and the elderly, "took no corrective action against suppliers with recurring deviations [known as nonconformances], numerous commodity complaints, and products that tested positive for prohibited pathogens," ..."

Which reminds me of a Robert Heinlein quote cited in Seth Godin's small is the new big:

"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."

Now, you. Read or write anything interesting lately?

Update [2008-3-3 9:0:38 by Natasha Chart]: To clarify, the Clinton campaign whispering mentioned above didn't come from the blog outreach team.